


takes guts to be gentle and kind

by jugheadjones



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Hospitals, fred and moose are bffs and the best friendship on the show lbr, moose and fred are Good Tough boys and you can pry them from my cold dead fingers, moose and midge aren't dying today satan!!!, moose showed up with a sledgehammer to save his construction company so when will your faves, post s02e02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-22 19:30:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12489176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jugheadjones/pseuds/jugheadjones
Summary: Archie’s standing in the doorway, his phone held dead in one hand, his freckles dark against the new grey-white of his face, his eyes glistening with tears.“It’s - It’s Moose,” he says, before Fred can even ask. “He’s been shot.”At half-past midnight, Fred’s watching A Nightmare On Elm Street and shovelling popcorn into his mouth. Ten minutes later, he's with Archie in his still-bloodstained pickup truck, barreling to the hospital where they've brought Moose and Midge after a surprise attack at Miller's Point. By the time the sun comes up the next morning, he's sat at Moose's bedside all night, let two different people cry into his shirt, and promised himself, a little helplessly, that he'll never let this happen again.The town is bad, but his kids are so, so good.





	takes guts to be gentle and kind

**Author's Note:**

> yeah the title's from a morrissey song what about it

At half-past midnight Fred’s watching _A Nightmare On Elm Street_ , shovelling popcorn in his mouth one-handed with the other pressed loosely over his injured side. His eyes never leave the screen, but he jumps when a hand lands on his shoulder, spilling popcorn all over his lap.

Archie, to whom the hand belongs, laughs and straddles the back of the couch. “I thought you weren’t scared of this movie.”

“You snuck up on me!” Fred tugs on him and Archie lets himself be pulled into Fred’s lap in a wrestling chokehold. Popcorn kernels crunch under his body weight, but he’s careful not to land too hard on any part of Fred’s body. Fred grabs a pillow and flattens it playfully over Archie’s face, smothering his cry for help. He’s debating wrapping his son up in a blanket for good measure when a burst of sound interrupts them.

“Hang on,” Archie rolls off the couch, fumbling for his phone. He raises it to check the call display and frowns. “Reggie’s calling me.”

Fred turns his attention to picking up popcorn kernels as Archie heads for the other room, swiping the screen of his phone to answer. Vegas comes trotting into the room to help him with the popcorn that’s landed on the ground. Fred’s able to gather up everything within a certain radius, but he’s going to have to ask Archie to get the popcorn that’s landed out of his reach. Especially on his right side.

Fred looks up then and feels the blood run coldly out of his face. Archie’s standing in the doorway, his phone held dead in one hand, his freckles dark against the new grey-white of his face, his eyes glistening with tears.

“It’s - It’s Moose,” he says, before Fred can even ask. “He’s been shot.”

* * *

He thinks he might break several traffic laws getting them there, Archie curled up small in the still-bloodstained passenger seat, reaching up only once to click Fred’s neglected seat belt into place when they’re about halfway to the hospital.

“Thanks,” whispers Fred, fingers curling on the steering wheel until they’re painful. Archie says nothing, just stares at him with frightened, pleading eyes. Asking him what’s happening. Asking him if it’s going to be all right. Fred’s supposed to have answers for these things, but he doesn’t.

Fred reaches out at the next stoplight, clutches his fingers into Archie’s hair and holds Archie’s head briefly against his shoulder.

Good parents aren't supposed to play favourites - not with their own kids, if they're lucky enough to have more than one, and not with their kids’ friends - not outwardly, at least. But Fred’s always had a soft spot for Moose, who’s been Archie’s friend since before kindergarten. Fred and Moose speak the same language - a tactile, physical camaraderie, the language of hair ruffles and bear hugs and back thumping. They talk the same way, find the same things funny. Fred had secretly been disappointed when Archie and Moose had grown apart in middle school, overjoyed when they fell back together in the ninth grade as a result of high school football.

Their families had grown up close, and Jerry and Marilyn and Mary and Fred had always paired off for carpools in their younger years, taking turns shuttling their kids to basketball, football, baseball, taekwondo. They still got an invitation to the Mason’s Fourth-of-July barbecue every year, like clockwork, though Fred hadn’t RSVP’d that year, the year of everything - Archie was going to be out of town on his road trip, after all, and the hot dogs weren’t worth Fred showing up alone with Mary’s spectre. Fred had spent the Fourth of July in a lawnchair with the first six chapters of Bruce Springsteen’s memoir and a cold bottle of beer, in what, upon reflection, was probably his last restful day of the year.

He thinks Moose would have understood.

Moose and Archie’s early baseball years are the memories he cherishes most, the ones in between T-ball and coach pitch. Fred had a treasured photo above his dresser of the two of them and Betty, smiling ecstatic, gap-toothed smiles in their blue uniforms.

Every year at the end of little league season, he’d abuse the family printer printing out certificates and goofy awards for all the kids, and Moose had taken home MOST IMPROVED more than one year running. He was also a repeat winner of the MOST BATS BROKEN award, and the year the Mason’s had started Moose in anger management therapy - at Fred’s suggestion - he’d given him the GOOD SPORTSMANSHIP award.

Not that Moose ever really had trouble with that - the best pitcher on the team, his signature move was the sacrifice bunt. Fred finds he can picture this one all too well - Moose spreading his arms over Midge, trying to shield her the way he’d tried to shield Archie, and then the sharp, deadly pop of the gun going off, the one that had signaled to him in that diner the end of his life -

Good sportsmanship, indeed.

All Reggie had been able to tell Archie on the phone was that Moose and Midge had been attacked at Miller’s Point, that they’d both been shot with a brutality consistent with Fred’s shooting. They were both alive, but for how long, not even the hospital orderlies were sure. Fred can’t sprint - he’s not even supposed to be driving - but he clutches Archie’s hand tight to keep his balance as the two of them hurry up the hospital stairs to the door.

When they get there the waiting room is lit as brightly as day, the florescent lights casting the linoleum in an ugly yellow glow. Moose’s father is sitting at one end of the waiting room, his hands clasped between his knees, his head down, sobbing.

“Jer-” says Fred, and goes to him as quickly as he can in the rapid, limping gait he has to use instead of running. Jerry stands up and falls into his embrace, weeping bitterly into his chest with his fists clenched against the front of Fred’s shirt.

“Jerry,” whispers Fred, and lets Jerry crush him, clutching him in a bone-breaking grip as he darkens the fabric of his pyjama top with his crying. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He holds Jerry to him, running his fingers gently through Jerry's hair and whispering _"sshh, shh, shh, shh,"_ until Jerry stops howling. At last, Jerry only leans against him, shivering horribly, so that Fred’s supporting Jerry's whole body weight. Jerry's a big guy, and Fred's weak now, after everything, but he keeps them both upright all the same.

Sometimes you have to.

* * *

They’re both alive. The Greendale resident who had heard the gunshots had been hunting out-of-season, using the late hour as cover in hopes of bringing home a buck. By a convenient miracle, he was also a volunteer firefighter with paramedic training. Sheriff Keller - until then, convinced that Fred’s shooting had been a one-off (and realistically, probably linked to Hiram’s re-emergence in Riverdale - hadn’t the two of them always been at each other’s throats in high school, the place from which all conflicts in Riverdale ultimately stemmed?) had been too shocked by the news to even fine him. He had left without telling Kevin, knowing what he knew about Kevin and Moose’s history. Kevin would find out come morning, when the sun rose. Now, in the early pre-dawn hours, the meager crowd of people in the waiting room finally get confirmation that Moose and Midge are stabilized, if not entirely safe.

It’s too good to be true. Rationally, their bodies should have gone undiscovered until morning, the likelihood of anyone hearing those gunshots - least of all someone who had the ability to do something about it - was too remote and too convenient. But the reality is horrifying enough, and Fred decides to ignore how much worse it could have been. Moose’s collarbone is shattered, one of his lungs collapsed. Midge had got two bullets in the lung, and was brought in in dangerously critical condition.

Fred hasn’t seen Midge since the fourth grade production of Hamlet - Archie had played a convincing but enthusiastic tree - but he recognizes her in every one of Archie’s class pictures, and thinks of her always with a certain fondness, borne out of her spiky-haired rendition of Ophelia. Thinking of the two of them undergoing this, young and lost and injured, hits him in a sore place inside his heart.

Hospitals are traumatizing, even as they’re saving your life. Fred had been afraid in here, afraid and in pain, and Fred was forty-two and had a lifetime of near-death experiences under his belt, had sat in hospital rooms before waiting for bad news, had made peace with IV drips and heart monitors and _hurting_. Moose and Midge were children less than half his age. Moose has seen football injuries, sure, and his younger sister had been very sick once - Moose has been at bedsides, has probably worn more tracks into these halls than his classmates, but this is a new kind of horror. This is something no adult should ever have to go through in a lifetime.

Fred sits at Moose’s bedside now, nodding off slightly against the wall, waiting for Jerry to get back from the cafeteria vending machines. Thinking about how funny it is, how funny and how patently unfair, that a week ago it had been Moose sitting here, Moose doing his homework patiently by Fred’s bedside, Moose chatting aimlessly with him about football, and music, and his favourite episodes of The Twilight Zone, while Fred - still hurting, but old enough to take it - laid immobile in the hospital bed, trying to keep himself awake long enough to respond.

 _This is a bad place_ , he thinks tiredly, exhaustion wearing heavy on his mind. It’s the first time he’s consciously thought this about his hometown, but it settles heavily in him with a kind of permanence, as if it had always been there waiting. _This town is a bad place._

“Dad?” rasps Moose weakly.

Fred’s head jerks up in a flash. He reaches anxiously for Moose’s straining hand on the duvet, gently taking Moose’s wrist and forearm in his hands and rubbing them reassuringly. “He’ll be here soon, Moose. He’s coming right back. It’s okay.”

Moose’s lips curl up into a weak smile. “Mr. Andrews.”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Fred squeezes the hand in his as a grimace of pain drifts across Moose’s face, his eyes closing briefly. He rubs the back of Moose’s hand with his thumb, trying not to let the sadness show on his face. “I know it hurts, kiddo. I know.”

There’s just barely a smile in Moose’s voice as he squeezes back. “You would.”

Fred laughs wetly, amazed at his toughness, the loveliness of him, of all the kids in this godawful town. Their resilience, even as the adults in their lives failed them. How beautiful they are, he thinks, how _fucking_ perfect and beautiful they are. How much better they deserve than us.

“Midge,” whispers Moose then, and the pain Fred had seen briefly unfocus his expression had been _nothing_ compared to the raw agony in that syllable, the sorrow and the aching horror of it. “Is she alright? Did she-”

 _Make it_ , would have been his next words, Fred would have bet a bundle on it - it was what he would have said himself. But another ridge of pain cuts off the end of the sentence and Moose screws his eyes shut, his fingers tightening painfully in Fred’s hand, what Fred can feel of his pulse racing.

 _"Hey, Mr. Andrews-?"_ Moose had asked once at a sixth-grade sleepover, the other boys shifting uncomfortably in the circle at the unsought intrusion of an adult into their private space. But Moose had been unselfconscious, fearless, addressing him openly. _"What do you think of Midge?"_

Fred had paused outside the living room, a bowl of chips in each hand, offering a smile to the group of them. _“I think she’s really cool.”_

 _“So there,”_ Moose had said to everyone, a big smile lighting up his face. _“She’s really cool.”_ And then, before it was too late, he had turned back to Fred with a smile. _“Thanks, Mr. Andrews.”_

He remembers this now as he’s squeezing Moose’s hand in reassurance, Moose’s eyes fixed trustingly and fearfully on his face, that Moose had once sat in Fred’s living room and been that relaxedly, candidly in love, that he had been about to ask _did she make it_ instead of _is she dead_ because Moose thought simply, wonderfully, unreservedly with optimism.

“The doctors have her stabilized,” Fred says quickly now, moving one hand to smooth a comforting circle into Moose’s uninjured shoulder, lest he try to rise from the pillows. “She’s out of surgery, same as you. They’re doing everything they can to take care of her.”

Moose takes a shaky breath in, his breathing sounding like something scraping over old stones. Fred waits for Moose to blame himself - _It’s my fault_ , would have been the next words out of Archie’s mouth, at least, but he doesn’t, only fixing his eyes hopefully on Fred’s face once more.

“You’ll tell me if they tell you anything else?”

“Of course,” says Fred, realizing at once the trust Moose has in him, feeling touched and sorrowful for it in equal terms. Moose must see some of the sadness flicker onto his face, because he cracks a dry-lipped smile, and says in a very small voice exactly what he knows Fred’s expecting him to. "I'm a tough guy, Mr. Andrews."

 _Yeah_ , Fred wants to say, _but you’re only a kid, and no one should have to be tough with a bullet in their shoulder_. And yet he knows in a way he’d never know with Archie that Moose understood this, that he was not trivializing his injury but looking only to reassure, to remind him that in the long run, once he’d run the gamut of the physical and emotional trauma, he would pull through. That they both would.

 _You don’t have to be tough_ , Fred still wants to tell him, heart hurting with love for him. But Moose had offered him what he wanted to hear. It’s his turn now to do the same.

“I know,” he says simply, and squeezes Moose’s shoulder as tenderly as he can, his voice hoarse and warm. "You're a bruiser stud if there ever was one."

Moose smiles at that, coughs painfully, but keeps talking in a raspy voice. His hand is very warm in Fred’s. “I’ll be back on the football team before you know it.”

"You'd better. What am I going to do with myself? No more WWE wrestling matches."

"No more broken lamps."

"I hated that lamp."  
  
Jerry comes in the room then, styrofoam coffee cup in hand, and freezes when he sees Moose awake. The look on his face is one of the utmost love and thankfulness.

“Marmaduke,” he says, tears rising in his eyes, the mercifully half-empty cup of coffee hitting the floor soundlessly.

“Dad,” chokes Moose, as Jerry rushes for him, embracing him awkwardly in the tightest hug the circumstances can permit. Fred stands instinctively to leave, and Moose’s head snaps around to follow him.

"I'll just be outside," says Fred reassuringly, and gives him a thumbs up. He’s not sure where it comes from - a long forgotten little league practice, probably, but Moose smiles gratefully and returns the gesture.

He finds Archie and Reggie seated together out in the hall: Archie looking pale but otherwise composed, Reggie’s face a drenched mess of tears. Reggie has Archie’s jacket on. Archie rises quickly to his feet when he sees Fred coming.

“Is he-?”

“He’s okay.” says Fred, as Reggie gets to his feet at the same time. He looks at Reggie, who’s lost all the Reggie-ness about him: his eyes swollen and fearful, his hair hanging lank and tangled in his face. “He's up, he talked to me. He’s all right, Reg.”

“And Midge?” Archie asks quickly. Fred wants to tell him that he doesn’t _know_ , that he doesn’t _have_ all the answers, that the two of them had arrived together and knew about the same amount of information. But parenthood means you swallow it and do what you can.

“I’m going to see about that now.” He pulls the both of them in for a hug, and they return it shakily so that the three of them stand in the hallway linked, holding one another up. Fred’s very aware that he’s still in his pyjamas.

He wants to call someone - in another life it would have been Mary - because God knows he can’t do this alone, can’t navigate this by himself when he’d been in one of these beds only a week ago. These kids need more than one upright adult to keep them safe. Alice Cooper crosses his mind, but he doesn’t want her sniffing around for a headline before the blood has even dried on the operating table. His heart aches to call FP, but that one was off the table. Hermione was occupied. Keller had flimsy witnesses to question, though the only two who can tell him what really happened were here in hospital beds.  

Reggie is crying again, further soaking Fred’s chest, and it distracts him from thinking. He hears Archie murmur something comforting, and he feels a brief throb of affection and gratitude. “Archie, Reg, you guys stay together, okay?” He disentangles himself gently from the hug, reaching out to stroke Archie’s hair when he steps back. “I’ll be right back.”

The nurses have nothing more to tell him about Midge, only that she’s stabilized and that they’re doing everything they can. No visitors allowed yet. The first, needle-like rays of morning sun are beginning to creep above the horizon, and Fred stops and crouches at a too-short water fountain to drink, feeling slightly light-headed.  
  
A memory comes excruciatingly to him, then: probably the best one he has of Moose, apart from the time he’d hit Archie in the face, age five, and Fred had taken the two of them aside to explain why you settled fights with your words, not your fists.

This one’s a rainy sophomore football practice, Archie apologizing because he’d made plans with Betty and didn’t need the ride home after all. Himself and Moose alone in the carpool as a result, the rain drumming the windows, and Moose getting quieter and quieter the further away they got from the field, taking deep breaths in occasionally as if to speak and then faltering, as if there were some massive, inexpressible thing within him that he couldn’t voice.  

_“Something on your mind, Moose?” he had asked at last._

_“No,” Moose had answered hesitantly. And then, a few seconds later. “I-”_

_Fred had looked at him, and he’d come out with it all in a rush, the two of them halfway from the school, the rain slackening to a drizzle on the roof of the truck. “I’m - I like boys. I’m not straight.”_

_He had been shaking, and Fred had reached out to rest a hand on his skin. “Moose, I’m proud of you,” he had said, and then, gently, when Moose still looked as though the world were ending around them, “Moose, breathe. Breathe. It’s okay.”_

_"Where are we going?"_

_Fred had pulled the truck off the main road, turning into the nearest fast food drive-thru, and he had pulled up to the order station then, past the rows of menus. "Chocolate or vanilla?"_

_“Vanilla. But you don’t have to-”_

_“Two vanilla cones,” Fred had told the talking box that you put orders through._

_“Pull through.”_

In the parking lot, parked under the shade of a massive, dripping oak, he’d asked Moose if he was the first person he’d told. They eat their ice cream the same way, holding it sideways and licking, never biting. Pressing the last of it into the cone with their tongues.

Moose had said yes. He _would_ tell his parents, he’d confessed to Fred, his hands shaking still but his breathing calmer, but didn’t know how they’d react. Needed more time. That was okay, Fred had told him, had never pressured him to do it. He’d held Jerry those few hours ago knowing that Moose probably hadn’t told, that if Moose had died that morning Fred alone held his secret.

 _This town is bad_ , he thinks again, and though it carries less weight somehow after sun-up, the meaning behind the words sinks quietly into his brain, lingers in a way he knows won’t come out. It’s in him now, the truth of it. He drinks again to try to wash the taste of it out of his mouth.

Back in the lobby, he sits holding Archie on one side of him and Reggie on the other. Reggie’s asleep on his arm, head cradled by the flesh below his shoulder so that Fred’s afraid to move and wake him. Archie leans against his other side, their heads resting together, Fred’s arm snaked around him to keep him close. The sun rises.

“You can sleep,” says Archie, “I’ll stay up,” and Fred smiles, strokes Archie’s lower back with his thumb as thank you, but doesn't take him up on it.

The town is bad, but his kids are so, so good.

* * *

“Mr. A?” asks Moose sleepily.

Fred glances up at him over chapter seven of _Born to Run_. “Yeah?”

“Are you still here?”

"I thought I'd hang out while your dad went home for your sisters. I know I hated being alone."

Moose smiles tiredly. "You're a good guy, Mr. A."

"You're a good guy too, Moose." Fred reaches out and squeezes his hand so he’ll listen carefully to the next words. “Midge is okay. They just put her in the room next to yours. She’s going to be just fine.”

The hopeful smile that crosses Moose’s face is so pure and so bright that looking at it dizzies him. “You know what?” he says drowsily, after a moment of silence. “I think if we were the same age, we’d be friends.”

“We are friends, Moose.”

“You know what I mean. Best friends.”

Fred smiles at him. “Go back to bed, okay?”

“What are you reading?”

Moose has never been a big reader, but then Fred’s never really been either. Fred turns the book around so he can see the cover. “My favourite musician wrote this.”

Moose looks it over, the five-hundred page girth of it, looks amused. “I guess he had a lot to say.”

“Go back to sleep, Moose.” Fred squeezes his hand, the sun warm and reassuring in the sky outside. “I’m right here if you need me.”


End file.
